ARCH_500-600 Options Studio: ‘Infrastructural Opportunism // Hyperloop One’

“Be anywhere, move everything, connect everyone.”

—Hyperloop One

Planning for a 600-mph future.

Hyperloop is an über high-speed, magnetic levitation transportation system intended to move people and freight at nearly 700 miles per hour. If it works as planned, it will be the fastest, most energy efficient land-based transportation yet invented. From 2,600 registered teams representing more than 100 countries, only 35 semi-finalist segments were chosen in the Hyperloop One Global Challenge. The United States Kansas City to St. Louis route was one of them. This 240-mile trip currently takes four hours by bus or car, five hours and forty minutes by train, or an hour by plane. On hyperloop, it would take less than 25 minutes. Hyperloop Missouri has fought hard to stay on the list of finalists. It has risen to the top by building a strong coalition and securing an engineering firm that provided one of the first feasibility studies in the country. While the study is complete, the real design work has yet to begin.

Working directly with representatives from Virgin Hyperloop One and the Hyperloop Missouri Coalition, this studio studied the past and analyzed the present to project the future. Students were inspired to look more broadly at the numerous spatial, philosophical, environmental, and social questions raised by the rapidly changing state of our cities and systems today. They worked from the macroscale of mega-regional, national, and international interconnectivity to the microscale of the portal (station) and pod. The semester began by looking at globally changing transportation patterns and technology (as recently as five years ago, autonomous vehicles were futuristic) and studying the existing climatic, demographic, and economic conditions. Attention then shifted to the mega-region scale for understanding state- and inter-state level resources, resistance, and opportunities. Collapsing space and time from hours to minutes introduces new relationships that emerge via interdependencies that have the potential to eradicate shortages and competition while doubling or tripling amenities and creating symbiotic benefits. Lastly, students considered the transition from very fast to very slow and the kinds of interfaces—technological, spatial, environmental—needed to prepare the 21st-century city for high-speed entry.

Students traveled to Las Vegas to see the 500-meter, full-scale test track and Los Angeles to visit the home office of Virgin Hyperloop One where VHO engineers, architects, and business analysts shared their expertise. Teams of students designed proposals during two charrettes: the first for the Las Vegas to Los Angeles route and a second focusing on the St. Louis to Kansas City route. Proposals in charette two spanned a range of symbiotic solutions including utilizing hyperloop to bridge urban/rural divides, leveling out cost of living and quality of life by networking shared resources, and designing rapid response pods and portals to create resilience in the face of natural disasters and climate change. Lastly, each student identified a pressing question posed by these proposals and designed architectural and urbanistic solutions utilizing next-generation infrastructure criteria to create a more sustainable high-speed future.

Project partners included Caroline Walters, Sarah Lawson, Ming-Tak Cheung, and Ismaeel Babur from Virgin Hyperloop One; Andrew Smith, Co-Chairman of Missouri Hyperloop Coalition and Project Liaison for Missouri Hyperloop at First Rule; and Drew S. Thompson, Director of Data Centers & Mission Critical Facilities, Black & Veatch.